


changes

by orphan_account



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: M/M, kinda introspection...., post tanker incident
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-17
Updated: 2019-02-17
Packaged: 2019-10-30 06:01:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17823227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: There’s also this: somewhere along the way, in the three years they’ve lived practically on top of each other, they slid into what they are without conversation. It only made sense, that they shared a bed, it saved them money and space, and in the winter it was necessary. It only made sense, then, that they’d end up tangled together in the morning, David accidentally waking Hal up when he goes to start the coffee. They work a high stress job, an immediate bonding experience, and Hal regularly helps him in and out of a sneaking suit.





	changes

**June, 2008**

When David was younger, he imagined his life idealistically. Before the military, he thought about going to veterinary school, a laughable dream compared to his life now. 

After the military, after FOXHOUND, when he was in his first retirement, he didn’t have much thought for the future. It wasn’t idealistic, really, but it was simple. Wake up, drink, pass out, rinse, wash, repeat. After Zanzibar, it was somehow worse, even with the added task of caring for the dogs.

When he left Shadow Moses behind, he figured he was going back to much the same as before, his dogs, his secluded cabin, his bottle. There was somehow, somehow, more sting to it this time, with Miller being dead, with Campbell clearly becoming someone David couldn’t, wouldn’t trust again. He did go back to that, even a little harder than before, with his nightmares being a little more vivid. 

Now?

Now, he’s in a car he stole three states over, waiting patiently for the Thai food he walked in to order to be ready. This wasn’t quite what he had in plan, really, but Hal had said,  _ if we eat anymore TV dinner I’m gonna lose it _ , jokingly, and David decided it would be nice to stop and get something before he made it back to their busted apartment. 

He has been doing intel gathering for two days, his only contact with other humans being Hal’s voice over the codec gently getting him through security and to the areas bugs needed to be planted. Lowkey work, Hal called it, something to do while they lay low. David tended to get twitchy and restless if he doesn’t have something to do, and Hal helpfully provided easy little jobs that got him out and moving. 

On the drive back, David had switched from  _ Otacon _ to  _ Hal _ and demanded the other man get some sleep, since David was just driving back into town and still had at least four hours to go. Hal was awake and present the entire mission, even when David took a nap in the air ducts while they waited for guard shifts to change. 

David knew Hal was still asleep, because he should have been back half an hour ago, but instead he took a detour to the only Thai food place nearby and then sat in his car and waited for them to wave to him. Sitting inside was too much, the noise and amount of people set his nerves jangling and his eyes watering in ways that made his hands shake embarrassingly. If Hal was awake, he would be quizzing him over the codec, fretting about David not being back when he said he would.

It was risky, but at this point David figured nobody spent their day memorizing the face plastered across the news and media for The Tanker Incident. Mentally, he says it with the capitalization, his ribs twinge at the thought, the memory of pain from when Hal broke them doing CPR. Besides, they had cut his hair immediately after, grown out his facial hair, and only now were they letting it get back anywhere close to its previous length. He’s gone back to clean-shaven, or at least only two to three days of growth, also.

The ladies inside the store waved helpfully at him, and after retrieving the bag of food, he points the car back to their apartment.

It’s positively domestic.

Their apartment is located in a shitty part of town, where the siding is half off and the roof looks like it wants to peel off the rest of the building. It’s home, for now, though. Rickety metal steps, wobbly when David steps too far from the middle, get him up to the third floor. It’s not particularly balmy, but it still works a small line of sweat up at his hairline. 

It’s the cheapest of them all, designed for a single person but  _ certainly big enough for two, _ the landlord said, more magnanimously than anyone this part of the country was about two grown men living together in a one bedroom apartment. It’s the top floor, with the alarming roof sections right above it. When the rain rolled through, Hal and David ran around and placed buckets and trash cans everywhere they had to, a tarp strung haphazardly over Hal’s computer equipment. 

The living room and kitchen are empty when David stepped into the apartment, bag crinkling noisily at his side. Looking through to the bedroom, however, the door is opened just so that David can make out the light to tell it’s nothing more than the screensavers on the computer monitors. 

He sat the Thai food bag down on the kitchen counter, and then walked back to the bedroom, pushed the door open enough to step in. Hal was asleep on the mattress shoved against the wall, flat on his back with his glasses crooked on his face. Must have rolled around a bit in his sleep, to set them off like that. The room was stuffy, the electronics pouring enough heat off to make the room at least ten degrees hotter than the rest of the apartment. 

First, David stepped out of the loose jeans and sweatshirt he put on over the sneaking suit, then he lowered himself to the mattress, placed a hand on Hal’s stomach. It’s not enough to wake the other man up, but David likes the reminder that Hal is alive, warm, breathing, here with him. He’s really the only person David has left, which was cruelly reminded to him when Hal pried him away from a death David was willing to step into, with Hal’s face worriedly looking down at him as he coughed water out of his lungs.

Leaned forward, his forearm braced next to Hal’s head, David dipped his head to press a kiss to his nose, to rub his cheek against his. His stubble catches a little painfully on Hal’s own stubble, but it’s familiar and grounding. Something that reminds him of solidity and warmth.

Hal groaned, blinked blearily at David when he pulled back. 

“I brought dinner,” David said, like he was coming back from a day at the office and not from crawling through air ducts and placing bugs. “Help me out of the suit?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Hal mumbled, uses one hand to rub his eyes, David watching his knuckles bump his cheekbones as they slip under the glasses rims. His other hand grasped onto David’s arm, gets pulled up into a sitting position when David helpfully sits back up straight. “What’d you get to eat?”

Fingers started unclipping and unlacing the pieces of the suit, and David watches as Hal’s mouth turns down every time he skims a thinning portion of the suit, his eyebrows creasing as he gets the top portion undone and there’s a bruise on David’s side from sliding awkwardly down a too steep portion of the air duct and banging against a junction at the bottom.

“I went to the Thai place we saw back when we moved,” David said, standing to allow Hal access to the bottom half of the suit. 

Maybe, when David was younger, he imagined the sneaking suit peeling away in a rush, whoever he was with then sliding hands on his skin, blood pounding from adrenaline, the rush of a success. Imagined a too rough kiss, hair between his fingers as he pulls them back to kiss down their throat. 

In reality, it’s like this: Hal pulling the sneaking suit away from his skin carefully, cataloguing all the weak points in the fabric he might need to mend, watching David closely to make sure he doesn’t have some injury he’s too big-headed to mention. There’s no urgency, no adrenaline, no violence in the action. It’s occasionally erotic in a way, his cock thickening in his lightweight briefs because of the strength of Hal’s gaze, and it’s not like they’ve never fooled around right after taking the suit off. More of, David doesn’t actually like the rush, more Hal doesn’t want David to act impulsively with him, wants David to be  _ here _ with him when they’re intimate. 

“You ordered in person?” Hal said, once David stepped out of the last bits of the sneaking suit, started getting dressed in sweats and a t-shirt.

“Yes,” David replied, waves off the stern look on Hal’s face. “No one recognized me, it was fine.”

Thankfully, Hal seemed to let it go quickly, stands and stretches and wanders out into the common areas. 

“How was the drive, otherwise?” Hal asked, raising his voice enough to be heard from the other room, the bag crinkling again as Hal looks through the contents.

“Quiet,” David said, steps back out of the room once dressed to stand a little too close to Hal, an elbow brushing David’s stomach alerting Hal to the lack of space between them. He just leans back, rests his body against the flat panes of David’s front.

He gets like this-- clingy, or something like that, when he’s been away. It wasn’t so bad, before The Tanker Incident. Now, David wants to soak up as much space as he can with Hal, wants to be close and reassured.

“Missed me?” Hal teased, tilts his hips enough to distract David from kissing the smirk off his lips. David still has a bit of a chub from the earlier scrutiny when the suit came off, and the pressure of Hal’s ass is quickly encouraging it into becoming a little bit more. When David’s hands slid under Hal’s shirt at the waist, fingers cool against the warm skin of his stomach, Hal laughed and finished pulling the food out. “Dinner first, then we can see where it goes.”

Dinner isn’t quick, and Hal gets sidetracked at least three times from whatever conversation they’re having, ends up in multiple long winded rants that David hangs onto the ends of and listens to even when the words are going over his head. His cheeks always pink up when he realizes he’s been talking for multiple minutes and David hasn’t gotten a word in edgewise in just as long, but David just smiles at him, tells him,  _ no, it’s interesting _ . 

His life wasn’t supposed to be like this. He isn’t straight, yes, but he always figured he’d be with a woman, even when he’d managed to have something more than just a night or two with a man, he’d always known it wouldn’t last, not when all the men he went for were like him, and couldn’t be trusted. Somehow, though, Hal had snuck into his brain, into his heart, into his life. Now, David can’t see any woman in his future, can only see Hal, maybe a cabin like the one he had in Alaska, at least two dogs, they’d have to have an office for Hal, so the computers could go someplace.

There’s also this: somewhere along the way, in the three years they’ve lived practically on top of each other, they slid into what they are without conversation. It only made sense, that they shared a bed, it saved them money and space, and in the winter it was necessary. It only made sense, then, that they’d end up tangled together in the morning, David accidentally waking Hal up when he goes to start the coffee. They work a high stress job, an immediate bonding experience, and Hal regularly helps him in and out of a sneaking suit. They’ve talked, a lot, about everything. New pieces of each other sliding into place everyday with every conversation. Hal cries, a lot, which David used to find pathetic, but now he recognizes it as the response to overstimulation and oversensation it is. Conversely, Hal has learned to read David’s body language, learned to interpret what David says and what he leaves unsaid, learned how to understand him through his tone.

So, when Hal leaned in, forehead pressing to David’s after a particularly disastrous mission one year into Philanthropy, it’s only natural David closes the gap, that they fall into bed together in a new, but not unwelcome way. It adds new synergy to the relationship, facilitates a certain in-syncness they’ve managed to perfect.

After dinner, David takes a shower. Hal is back on the computer when David dripped into the bedroom, but his eyes dart over to him when he stepped in. David doesn’t bother drying his hair, just dropped the towel he had around his waist onto the floor and flopped onto the mattress. It’s a bit painful, since it’s not the best mattress and it’s on the floor, but it’s tolerable. 

Hal has turned in his chair, the computer shutting down behind him, eyes scanning down David’s body.

His cock is getting interested again, starting to twitch towards hardness.

Before Philanthropy, or, more like before this thing with Hal, David’s sex life consisted of quick fucks with people either too dear or too strange to him. Hal is the closest thing to a proper relationship David has, well, ever had, as embarrassing as that sounds. With Hal, and the trust and knowledge they’ve built with each other, David decides he’s plain vanilla. Another embarrassing fact, probably, but David has only ever known intimacy before Hal in the terms of quick, unsatisfying in some ways but ultimately not terrible sex that succeeded in making him feel good, but not great.

He likes to fuck Hal nice and slow, pillow propping Hal’s hips up and David’s hands tight at his waist, little bruises forming in the shape of David’s grip. They usually face each other, because David needs to see his face, needs the reassurance that Hal wants him like this. He usually comes first, biting at Hal’s neck or shoulders. Then, he’ll get Hal off in whatever way the other man desires, but always ends up with fingers tight in David’s hair and long, sucking kisses. 

With Hal watching him now though, David feels a little like he needs him, the two days they were separated the longest they’ve been away from each other in, well, nearly a year, at least. He showered partially to get the grime of two days of sleuthing off, and partially to prepare for Hal to fuck him.

Hitching a leg up, David scrabbled under the pillows for their lube, watches the narrowing of Hal’s eyes, the way his Adam’s apple bobs when he swallows. It’s always a little sloppy when David gets the lube because he always just tries to pour it into his hand, but Hal doesn’t have a protest this time when the excess lube slips from David’s fingers onto the bedspread under his ass as he takes his time inserting a finger into his hole. 

Hal swallowed, loudly, eyes focused on the finger in David’s ass, hands gripped onto the armrests of his chair. David likes this part, when he can watch Hal and Hal can watch him.

One more finger later, and Hal slips off the chair to his knees to crawl in between David’s legs.

“Dave,” he said, throatily, hands stroking up and down the thighs framing his hips. “Can I?”

It’s a little ambiguous, what exactly Hal wants, but David trusts him to know the boundaries and lines they have set, so he nodded in permission. Hal poured a little lube onto David’s stomach, swiped his fingers through it until they’re coated, and then gently replaced David’s fingers with his own, strokes purposely over his prostate the second he finds it. David had been avoiding it, mostly, so Hal’s attention is just starting to build the buzz it brings under his skin. David gapes when Hal leans down, sucks the head of David’s cock into his mouth and suctions hard, a gasp ripped out of David.

The combination of fingers on his prostate and a mouth on his dick is fizzling the thoughts out of David’s head, and he knows he’s making noise, but he doesn’t really care if anyone hears him.

A few moments later, Hal has mercy on David and lets his dick slip from his mouth and lightens the rubbing of his prostate to something that’s keeping him hot but not sending him into a frenzy.

“How do you want me,” Hal asked, leaned to press kisses to David’s face and lips. His brain is still trying to refocus, and the kisses are distracting enough that Hal pulls back to simply look at his face.

“Uh,” David said, at first, one hand in Hal’s hair and the other gripping his hip. “Roll me over first, then you can fuck me.”

Hal has to clench his eyes closed to keep it together at his words, an expression so endearing David feels overwhelmed. 

Slowly, Hal pulled his fingers out. David groaned at the loss, but is placated shortly after when Hal rolls him onto his stomach, and the crinkle of a condom wrapper is loud in the otherwise quiet room. Clothes get tossed to the side, Hal only undressing from his layers just now. 

The lube cap clicks open and closed, and then Hal is back against him, the hot head of his cock starting to push at the rim of muscles. Hal is murmuring something into David’s ear, but he’s not really listening, focused instead of the way Hal is pressing kisses to the side of his face, to the shaky hand on his lower back.

Usually, David wants to see Hal’s face, wants to watch, but it’s been a while and this position is far easier on him, anyway. There’s something special to the way Hal huffs against the back of his neck, the way he uses one hand to pull one of his asscheeks out to try and see, or to just feel his ass up, in general.

Like all their sex, Hal takes his time, slides carefully and slowly into David, sits and waits for him to adjust, and when given the a-OK, slides almost all the way out, and then back in steadily. It’s not quick, but it’s faster than David fucks him. Hal is a little more impatient, a little less in control. It’s hot, for David, to know Hal is trying to extend this more, trying to stop himself from coming immediately once he’s sank in. 

Sweat builds on both of them, David scrabbling at the bed and squirming on Hal’s cock, gasping hotly at every new thrust that hits just right. Hal is so good at getting the angle, can prop himself in such a way that David feels each thrust in so perfect. It doesn’t take long for David to lift his hips enough to get a hand between the mattress and himself, to start stroking himself.

“Yes,” Hal murmured, leaned again to suck at David’s pulse point at his jaw. “Are you close?”

David nodded, can’t get his thoughts together enough to work words out. 

David comes first, buries a shout into the pillows and shakes through it. Hal pulls out when the oversensitivity makes David hiss at him, and grinds himself to orgasm against David’s ass.

When Hal flops next to him, he runs fingers through David’s hair, looks him in the eyes.

“I love you,” he said, with all the confidence in the world.

David closes the gap between them, licks at Hal’s palate, steals his breath for his own, until they’re both  out of air and gasping.

“I love you,” he said back, lips still brushing.

**Author's Note:**

> ultimately part of something bigger, eventually? this was written in 3 hours, if you cant tell


End file.
